What a difference one week makes! On Thursday's blog post my title was, "what a difference a day makes". In the headline driven market we find ourselves where fundamental and technical analysis count for little, the impending deflationary death spiral we were confronting early in the week melted away with one comment from ECB President Mario Draghi: "Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough." That last sentence sent global risk assets skyrocketing into the weekend.

The U.S. economy looks set to deliver a repeat performance in 2012: for the third straight year, it may suffer a swoon yet not slip into a recession.

"I don't think the slowdown will be any more consequential than the past two years," said John Ryding, a former Federal Reserve researcher who is chief economist at RDQ Economics LLC in New York. "There are positives out there in the economy. We'll avoid a recession."

How many European bankers does it take to change a light bulb? That's a joke in search of an answer, but EWI's European analyst Brian Whitmer explained five months ago that the "light bulb moment" was coming -- that's the time when most people would clearly recognize the severity of the European debt crisis.